I have been porting some of my TM1 models over to PALO CE 3.2 to learn more about how this tool works. There have been a number of challenges, as in things don't work exactly how the PALO "documentation" says, but overall I am highly impressed for an open source solution. One thing I must give them kudos for is performance of the Excel add-in over a WAN. PALO performs quite well over a WAN, especially when compared to TM1 Perspectives.

I have just taken a look at this "new" release (well it is the latest one and I've been away doing non-OLAP-development stuff for the last year).

For reasons I can only guess at they decided to change the TM1 clone N: notation to B:

So if you want to write/edit a base level rule you have to write / change to B:

However, in both cases it then changes B: to N: so next time you save it it complains that the syntax is wrong and you have to change the N: to a B: again and then it changes it back to N: and then ... well you get the picture.

And my cumulatives don't work any more and cause the model I wrote to crash. Cumulatives are pretty key in forecasting control apps

As a strategy to get people to try the software before purchase having an Open Source version seems quite a clever idea. It derisks the project from the client perspective and when they are happy, bingo, you've made a sale. However, if the OS version contains obvious bugs it has the opposite effect as I am hardly likely to stake my reputation on a planning tool that can't do cumulative calculations and keeps throwing unnecessary errors whenever I change a rule.

John Hobson wrote:And my cumulatives don't work any more and cause the model I wrote to crash. Cumulatives are pretty key in forecasting control apps

I have noticed that Palo CE has a limit on how many "dependencies" it can have in a rule. By that I mean Cell C is calculated by a rule which is dependent on a rule-based Cell B which is dependent on a rule-based Cell A. Once you get past the the limit then you don't get an error message, the rule just doesn't work. When you try and trace it the message says "no rule found" even though you know good and well it's there. I don't know for sure what the "limit" is because it varies but it's around three or four. So, if that's something you need then you'll have to do some sort of workaround, usually with a hierarchy change, or something like that. When I first started working with it I tried to convert some of my TM1 models and certain things that worked in TM1 just wouldn't work in Palo CE. I traced them all back to this dependency limit. FWIW, the commercial version didn't appear to have these limits.

I don't know if it's done intentionally or not but it is hobbled. CE only runs in 32-bit mode, it can only utilize one processor, and the biggest thing I have found is that the web reporting tool only works in "design" mode, making it useless for your end users. If you are a small to medium-size company, can design your model around the dependency limits, have only a handful of users, don't need a web interface, and can fit your data inside a 32-bit box, then it is a nice tool. If any of those missing requirements are critical then you have to move up to the commercial version or even to TM1.

It seems to me that Palo is now the embarrassing relation of Jedox Pro. They made such a huge thing about being Open Source when they were starting out that it seems that they can't just kill it, but it now has its own web site and if you try to get the Channel Manager to tell you what the differences are between Pro and CE he just tells you that if you were professional you would use Pro.

The direct question "Is CE a product in its own right or is it Pro a release or so back with no support offered?" just gets ignored. Multiple times.

if you ask why they are happy to let errors in CE stand for months you just get told to wait for the next release or upgrade to Pro.

OK, it's a free product, but if it were my show I'd either make sure something worked or can it totally. A working but limited version would be acceptable of course, but a version that stops working and won't get fixed for months is a waste of everyone's time

This halfway house where nobody quite knows what functionality the product is supposed to have or if it is going disappear or break between versions is worse than useless, and it doesn't inspire confidence in the Pro product for me either I am afraid.